MORGANTINA GODDESS RETURNS HOME, SICILY CELEBRATES

The Morgantina goddess, the Hellenistic statue that was stolen thirty years ago, returns to its home and is receiving visitors. The statue was bought by the Paul Getty Museum in Malibù and returned a month and a half ago to Sicily. It is owned by the Region and is exhibited as of today in the museum of Aidone, a small village in the inlands of the island in the Enna Province.

The exhibition was opened by important guest: Culture Minister Giancarlo Galan, the President of the Sicily Region Raffaele Lombardo, US consul general in Naples Donald Moore, presidential advisor for artistic heritage Luis Godart and senator Francesco Rutelli, who initiated the statue's return when he was Culture Minister. The inauguration of the Morgantina goddess in what will be its final home for the Region concludes a long exile that started when a group of grave-robbers took possession of an exceptional find: a 2.20m high statue in drapery, the arms and head sculpted from white marble from the island of Paro. The style and technique point in the direction of an artist of the school of Phidias. Since the statue is finished on all sides, scholars think that it was made as a centre piece, perhaps in a holy place. In that case what at first had been called the ''Venus of Morgantina'' would actually be a pagan divinity that was venerated in Greek Sicily: Demeter or Persephone. After the find, the ''grave robbers'' separated the statue into three parts to sell it on the illegal art market.

Investigators discovered that it was sold in 1985 by a dealer in Gela to a moneychanger in Lugano, who resold it for 5 million 500 thousand USD to an English collector. On July 25 1988 it was bought by the Paul Getty Museum for 18 million USD. After reconstructing the voyage of the Morgantina goddess from Sicily to the USA, former Minister Francesco Rutelli started a diplomatic initiative to get it back to Italy. After 30 years, the goddess is home again